It came an hour after nightfall. The clouds rolled across the sky, blotting out the stars and the light of Dissent. The wind came up, bouncing the platform around. That was my signal to begin; with the branches already bouncing, they wouldn't notice my movements.

I began pulling against the manacles, to slice off part of my hand. The hardest thing was keeping the pressure on the manacles strong enough in the right direction so that the two outermost fingers on each hand were ripped off by the glass, and not the thumb.

I needed the thumb for climbing.

There was a horrifying moment when both hands came free at once, right when a gust of wind jerked the platform under me. I fell flat on my face-- but luck was kind to me that day, and I fell on the supporting branch rather than into empty space.

I lay there for a moment, dripping blood from my -maimed hands, as the rain began to pour.

Only a few minutes left until the storm died down. Between the clouds, the rain, and the darkness of night, I could see nothing at all. Yet I had to move, had to get away from the prison before my motion became detectable again. The pain was nothing, but conquering my fear of falling and my fear of moving in the darkness was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life until then, with the greatest personal risk. Even now as I think about it, I wonder at what kind of madness caused me even to attempt it. But I was still young then, and life didn't have quite the high price on it that it has now.

The wood was slippery, and I crawled and climbed and staggered far faster than was safe, I tried to stay on the branches in the direction they forked from, knowing that eventually I would find a thicker branch with firm footing. I mostly kept my eyes closed, feeling ahead of me with my hands, because even in the pitch darkness, as long as my eyes were open, my mind kept wanting to see, and tended to panic when it couldn't.

Once I came to a platform, and was afraid for a moment it might be occupied. It wasn't, and from that platform to solid wood was only a matter of moments. I still didn't get up and run, however. I had no guide, and the wood was slick. But it was a relief not to be tossed back and forth, and I let myself descend into the darkness.

The rain stopped. The wind stopped. And just as I sighed in relief, the path I was following suddenly became very steep, and I lost my hold and fell. For a moment I thought that this was my death,j but almost immediately I landed on a platform.

"What the hell!" said an angry voice as I got up from the platform. I had knocked somebody down.

"What in the world is falling from the sky these days?" asked a woman's voice, amused.

I doubt they were amused when I took them apart. I had no time to be gentle and persuasive. But I don't think I killed them. Their instincts and my desires coincided far enough that neither of them came close to falling off the platform and, once I had immobilized them, I took a moment to search them for anything I might be able to steal. I had some vague notion of pretending to be a thief, to throw off the chase.

The man did have a knife, and I took it, along with an iron amulet the woman wore around her neck. Even then I had a vague thought that I might need money once I got away from Nkumai-- as if I had a reasonable hope of doing that. Then I found a rope ladder that began at the platform, held my breath, and let myself over the side and down into the darkness.

I descended silently, listening for any tell-tale noise that might come through the night air, telling me that my escape had been discovered, but the night was silent. A dim light began to filter down to my level as the clouds moved away and Dissent came higher into the sky.

As I passed a platform that connected with a rope bridge, I toyed with the idea of getting off the ladder. But I decided to go down at least one more level, putting as much vertical distance between me and my pursuers as possible.

It was a bad decision. I had no sooner passed the platform than the rope ladder began to swing violently, pendulum-fashion. And then it began to rise. They had found me.

My reflexes on the treeway were still slow. It took me a moment to decide to turn around on the ladder, get on the other side, the same side as the platform. By then I was a good three meters above it, and rising fast. I couldn't wait to get the range. I jumped backward when a dead guess told me I should.

I landed on my back and slid in the direction of the grain of the wood, filling my back with splinters. I had so much momentum that I slid right off the platform and down the steep beginning of the rope bridge.

It's one thing to run madly down a rope bridge and up the other side. Sliding down headfirst on your back offers far less control. I spread my feet to try to stop myself by hooking on to the ropes on either side. Unfortunately, my right leg caught first, jerking me in that direction, The side ropes stopped me from falling, but my impact had enough force to tip the entire bridge to the side, spilling me over.

I caught the ropes, and my grip held with a sickening jerk. The bridge was virtually upside down where I hung-- and the situation became worse as the wooden treads fell out of position. One of them struck me in the shoulder, and by reflex that hand let go. I held with the other, and quickly recovered my grip. But I could see no way of righting the bridge-- it was not like a boat that had capsized. There was no water to support me while I turned up the bridge; in fact, the only way to right the bridge was to let go. And that wouldn't help a bit.

I toyed with the idea of going back, hand over hand, to the platform I had left because it was much closer than the other side But I knew that it wouldn,t be long before my followers, undoubtedly guards, were on that platform-- and besides, they controlled the only other escape from it, the rope ladder.

So I began to go hand over hand toward the other end of the bridge. I was grateful for my thumbs. Even though the bleeding from my amputated fingers had stopped, my hands were still sore, and not at their strongest as they tried to heal. But I had a grip. At first, at least. After a while I had to twist an arm into the ropes to help support my weight. It slowed me down more, but I still made fair time.

Toward the end of the bridge, the position of the main hawsers forced the bridge to a more normal level, despite my body weight, and I gratefully pulled myself up onto the treads.

Then I felt a bouncing that was not caused by my own motion-- someone else was coming along the bridge. Now that it was upright again, they'd make good time, except in the section where the treads had fallen out. And sure enough, I heard a cry of surprise and a sudden lurching of the bridge. Did the man fall through, or catch himself in time? I had no way of knowing; even in the dim light I couldn't see more than two meters ahead of me.

Two meters was enough, however, for me to see that the platform I was approaching was occupied. However, they were obviously not part of the chase-- both men were facing away from me. I had no time to waste, and there was no longer any point-- if there ever had been-- in trying to mask the fact that I was escaping. The knife I had stolen found one man's heart as he turned around to face me, even as the other man fell forever into the night from a sharp kick I landed on the small of his back. He made no sound as he fell.

Pulling the knife out of the Nkumai, I looked around for another escape, and discovered that I was at the crotch of a main trunk and a major branch, not two branches. There was no downward slope-- only the straight-down plunge of the trunk. The branch led upward-- not the direction I wanted to go. And the bridge was still bouncing with my pursuers travel. If they hadn't been slowed by the missing treads, they would certainly have reached me by then, accustorned as they were to travel in the dark.